Missouri voters showed up and shut down the legislature's attempt to gut citizen initiatives - and then, hours before polls closed, the Secretary of State went in front of a camera and declared their 300,000-signature people's veto unconstitutional anyway.

Cara McCormick, Ethan Handelman, and Shawn Griffiths break down what actually happened in Missouri: the legislature's repeat attempts to raise thresholds and choke off petition drives, the mid-cycle gerrymander that made Missouri the third state to redraw its maps in 2025, and the pile-on that followed — a third of signatures thrown out, an ICE referral aimed at petition circulators, a Black Friday mass text campaign, and a map that never got suspended the way the law says it should. From there it's the DNC's August 15 vote to bar ranked choice voting from the delegate process, a Maine primary where 72% of voters picked a nominee the party swapped out anyway, and the case for a mandatory retirement age that applies to everyone on the taxpayer's dime (inspired by Mitch McConnell’s 50 day Senate absence). 

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Chapters:

00:00:00 – Missouri Voters Reject the Legislature's Power Grab

00:05:06 – People Not Politicians vs. Secretary Hoskins

00:09:07 – The DNC's War on Ranked Choice Voting

00:14:12 – How Parties Override Their Own Primaries

00:17:36 – Mitch McConnell, Age Limits & Term Limits

00:21:17 – Trump's Poll Numbers & Truth Social Pay-to-Play

00:25:14 – Two-Thirds of Americans Don't Trust Elections

00:28:03 – Elon Musk's $120M Super PAC Midterm Bet

00:30:32 – Maine's Question 1: Capping Super PAC Contributions

00:35:16 – Money Equals Speech? The Supreme Court's Call